Send in the Clowns

The Michener’s ‘Wolfgang Roth: Art of the Theater’ portrays both the playful and the human aspects in the set designer’s work.

By: Jessica Loughery
   Wolfgang Roth’s sculpture "Clown" (circa 1984) represents a human. Or maybe it’s a machine. Perhaps it’s both.
   The Michener Art Museum’s Curator of Collections Constance Kimmerle recognizes a theatrical or circus theme running through much of the museum’s current exhibition, Wolfgang Roth: Art of the Theater, on view in Doylestown, Pa., through Dec. 31. She also says the exhibition includes "serious reflections on life" and "more lighthearted" pieces.
   It may seem difficult to balance two such themes in one exhibition, but think of the essence of the clown: an entertainer maintaining a continuously joyous, non-human façade, cloaked in bright colors and caked with face paint. Serious observations can be made of most performers, regardless of how thick or thin their makeup.
   The exhibition features works belonging to the Michener’s own Wolfgang Roth collection. "When Wolfgang Roth died in 1988," says Ms. Kimmerle, "the estate divided his artwork between the New York Public Library, the theater collection of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, and the Michener. We received a little under 200 works.
   "When we first received them a few pieces were shown," she continues. "But we never had a full exhibit because the pieces needed to be inventoried. We completed the inventory in the last two years."
   Wolfgang Roth was a theatrical set designer. Born in Berlin in 1910, he entered the Berlin School of Arts and Crafts at 16. From there, he went on to study at Berlin’s Academy of Arts in 1928. It was during these years that he began designing sets for political theater groups. Ms. Kimmerle quotes the following from an autobiography Mr. Roth started, but never finished, in the exhibition:
   "I… wanted to fight for a better world. We lived in a strange blend of absolute desperation and enormous zest for life. The time was actually horrible… constantly lurking catastrophes, the increasing street battles between communists, socialists and Nazis."
   Mr. Roth also joined the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists of Germany during this time, where he met some of the early Dada artists who were working with photomontage, collage and cinema. The movement, begun in Berlin in 1916, represented a denial of current artistic conventions in the form of aggressive political expression.
   In 1929, while he was working for experimental theater director Erwin Piscator, Mr. Roth met Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. He began working on Moholy-Nagy’s smorgasbord sets, which often involved film and projections, along with dynamic installations like conveyor belts and trapdoors.
   In 1933, Mr. Roth fled Berlin to escape the Nazi regime. He lived in Vienna and Zurich before settling in New York in 1938, where he again designed sets for theaters and opera houses. Finally, in 1953, he and his wife moved to Bucks County, Pa., where Mr. Roth would spend the rest of his days.
   Over the years, Mr. Roth was responsible for the sets of many sizeable shows, including the world tour of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which ran from 1952 to 1956. A miniature model of the set is one of three on display in this exhibition. The scene is Catfish Row, a fictitious suburb of Charleston, S.C. Side by side residential structures bear windows with open shutters. Intricate staircases connect multiple floors. A blue sky is visible beyond the buildings.
   A relatively small installation, Art of the Theater also contains a number of bright, dynamic lithographs on paper, many of which also have a geometric feel to them, including "Elephant Ballerina" and "Cheval de Cirque." On the same wall are similarly bright and geometric collages. There also are watercolors and a few ink, pen and crayon sketches, which portray personages like weeping clowns and angry guitar players.
   Of a more personal nature are a map of the Roth home and the book The Personal House: Homes of Artists and Writers. The former, completed in 1967, is an ink drawing on paper comically representing each area of the estate. The latter was printed in 1961 by Whitney Library of Design and featured the Roth home. On loan from Betty Alswing and Amur Hiken, who currently own the old Roth home, the book includes the following caption:
   "The Roths chose Bucks County because it is so European in flavor and the old house precisely because it fitted in so completely with that flavor and is so right for the area."
   Across from these pieces stands Mr. Roth’s "Clown," made of steel rods, tin, iron, plastic, wood, gold leaf and Plexiglas. The figure almost takes the form of an easel, though the parts clearly suggest a human figure. In the torso, an arrow points upward to a black and white bull’s-eye where the heart would be. The circle spins, powered by electricity. Wooden spheres are eyeballs; a halved funnel is a mouth. Everything about the figure seems mechanical, but yet, one cannot deny the suggestion of deep humanity. In that paradox perhaps lies the essence of the theatricality theme running through much of Mr. Roth’s work.
   "Clown" is one of Mr. Roth’s "color drawings in space," as he called them. These were three-dimensional works, many completed during the 1970s when he was struggling to overcome loss of vision in his left eye. "The Dancer" (circa 1975-85) stands just down the wall from "Clown" and features steel rods, string, wire, copper and tin in the form of a colorful, geometric figure, again a performer.
   Of his color drawings in space, Mr. Roth wrote, "I find myself laughing out loud when I look at them. They tell me all sorts of tales and I only wish that others laugh at them too."
Wolfgang Roth: Art of the Theater will be on view at the James A. Michener
Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, Pa., through Dec. 31. Hours: Tues.-Fri.
10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. Admission costs $6.50,
$6 seniors 60 and over, $4 students with ID, members/under 6 free. For more information,
call (215) 340-9800. Michener Museum on the Web: www.michenerartmuseum.org